It’s the end of September 2023, less than two years are left before Euro 7 standards come into force, and they still haven’t approved, which puts automakers operating in the European market in a very difficult, if not hopeless, situation.
Euro 7 is the last and most difficult phase in limiting harmful emissions from internal combustion engines in the European Union; there will be no Euro 8 standards, because in 2035 the EU authorities intend to completely ban the sale of new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles with internal combustion engines running on fossil fuels . In theory, the life of internal combustion engines after 2035 can be extended by synthetic fuel; Germany is now very actively lobbying for it, but this lobbying activity has not yet produced concrete results, and there is still a lot of time until 2035.
With Euro 7 standards, the situation is much more acute: for cars and light commercial vehicles they are due to come into force in July 2025, for trucks and buses — in July 2027. The European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) and the Stellantis corporation, which has left it, fiercely criticize the Euro 7 standards as meaningless and even harmful — they say that the costs of their implementation will be cosmic and will not pay for themselves in a fairly short distance until 2035, prices for “hydrocarbon” models have sharply will grow, and this is a blow to freedom of movement — one of the main European values. The budgets of automakers are not flexible: the costs of complying with Euro 7 standards mean either a reduction in costs for the development of electric vehicles or an early abandonment of models with internal combustion engines. Skoda, for example, has already threatened to discontinue its most affordable Fabia, Scala and Kamiq models if Euro 7 standards are not relaxed.
The current version of the Euro 7 standards, presented by the European Commission in November last year, requires new cars to maintain the declared environmental characteristics for 10 years or 200,000 km, while the testing requirements are significantly tightened: the temperature range has increased (from -10 to +45 ° C), speed, elevation difference, etc. We talked in more detail about the current edition of Euro 7 in a separate note; you can familiarize yourself with the draft document itself on the European Commission website.
The final version of Euro 7 should be adopted this year; there is little time left for approvals. Recently, as reported by Automotive News Europe, leading EU member states agreed on a softer version of Euro 7 proposed by Spain: it implies maintaining the original requirements for CO2 emissions, but reduces the requirements for emissions of nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and wear products from brakes and tires. That is, it is proposed to slightly close our eyes to truly harmful substances, but to fight to the death in the fight against carbon dioxide, the harmful effect of which on the climate has not yet been scientifically proven, but is accepted as an axiom at the legislative level. In addition, the new edition of Euro 7 proposes not to change the testing requirements and leave everything as is, that is, at the level of the current Euro 6 standards.
It is not known whether the softened version of Euro 7 will ultimately be adopted, as long as it is approved only at the level of EU ministers, pending coordination in the European Commission and the European Parliament. It is possible that senior EU officials will decide to insist on their own, that is, no mitigation, period. This, in turn, will cause another heat of passion: automakers may have to move from threats to action — to close a couple of factories and fire several thousand workers to show what the reckless environmental policy of the European Union is leading to. In general, we continue to observe.
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